


Acorn Child

by JanecShannon



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Music, Magical Realism, Nymphs & Dryads, Playing fast and loose with mythology, Siger is a Pagan, kid!mycroft, or something like it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:45:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1302046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanecShannon/pseuds/JanecShannon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anthea is an ancient dryad (a oak tree nymph) who's been hiding from the world for centuries until one day a little boy climbs a little too high and falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by [The Old Hanging Tree](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMu4_6B2FC8) by Blackmore's Night. It's a beautiful song but you don't really need to listen to it to understand... Really, the only way it even relates is that I was listening to it and was like "Ooohhh, Anthea."

The servants talked of the tree with fear. Haunted, they said, by the spirit of some young woman hung ‘til death from the tree’s branches for some transgression long forgotten (her name forgotten with it). Even the birds seemed to avoided it so the tree suits a five year old Mycroft Holmes’ purposes perfectly. 

No one had ever actually _told_ Mycroft to avoid it and with everyone else avoiding it, it would be the perfect place to get a bit of quiet reading done. 

x-x-x-x-x

_It had been many, many cycles since she felt the tug of weight on her limbs but she could no longer bear to face the efforts of Man and instead buried herself deeper in her bark-armored tree._

x-x-x-x-x

Mycroft had never been an athletic child so it was bound to happen eventually. His nanny came looking for him and, not wanting to be found, the boy found himself climbing higher than ever before. 

He had become rather proficient at climbing but he was still just a child of five (and seven-twelfths). As much as his mind was far older than his age, he could do nothing about the inherent clumsiness of a child. The tiny muscles of his arms that couldn’t _quite_ support his weight as he misjudged the depth of a knothole. 

He lets off a shriek as he falls. 

x-x-x-x-x  
 _  
The passage of time had long ceased to have meaning to her but just because it went unremarked upon did not mean it went entirely unnoticed. Man had taken notice of her once more it seemed and they had only become more blood thirsty with the cycles._

_Nearly every day they came, though she could never bring herself to emerge from her tree to watch them use her ancient strength as it was never intended to be...To break each other, to steal life from each other. Men were the cruelest of all the Mother’s creatures._

_It was the cry of a young boy that finally drew her attention._

_It snapped her focus to the world outside her tree so quickly she nearly forced herself out of the truck (something she had not done since Man had misused her). A young boy was falling and she directed her branches to slow him, to soften the fall as much as she could and direct him away from the large inflexible limbs that would break and injure his soft human body. But there were fewer and fewer of these as he sped towards the ground and soon he was headed straight for one and she could do nothing to slow or alter his path with her branches. She did the only thing left she could think of._

_For this child of Man, she left the safety of her tree and caught him._  
  
x-x-x-x-x

When he wakes (which he wasn’t entirely expecting... even as young as he is, he is able to recognise the rather small possibility of surviving the fall he took) he is surprised to be cushioned by something soft, rather than the cold ground or rough branches. Even his nanny is not one to cradle him this way. 

“You should be more careful, child,” a woman’s voice scolds him and he feels it rumble deep in the chest he is cushioned against. 

“Ellie?” he asks, because he’s surprised not to hear her harping. 

“The other Man?” the woman asks.

“Ellie’s not a man, she’s a woman,” he corrects, giggling childishly at this strange woman’s foolishness. 

There is a quiet pause and (though Mycroft does not know it) the woman is throwing herself back to a time when she walked from her tree freely to remember that, yes, Man differentiated themselves by a thing called gender and did not simply pollinate to reproduce the way plants did. 

“Of course,” she answers eventually. “When you cried out but never fell to the ground or answered her calls, she ran for help. I believe she assumes you’ve been caught on one of the branches.”

x-x-x-x-x

“Mycroft!” a Man calls from below then there is wood braced against her trunk and a head breaches the leafy barrier below them. He is a follower of the Old Ways, she can see it in the way the strands of Fate pass through him rather than around (the Old Ways tend to put the path of destiny in the hands of Her followers rather than simply directing them where they are intended). He recognises her, not for what she is but more for what she isn’t and breathes out a shocked breath. 

“By the Mother,” he whispers. “The boy?” he demands, holding out his arms. He is defensive. He would attack her for this child knowing full well he would have no chance against her. 

But she is not one of the Sidhe. She has no desire to keep him nor replace him so she loosens her hold on the youngling and drops her leg closest to the Man over the side of the branch so the boy may climb to him. But the boy merely leans back and observes her carefully. 

“What sort of material is this?” he asks, pointing at the coverings that she had reflexively assembled for herself upon leaving her tree. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“And you will likely never see it again, Mycroft,” the Follower answers. “Come. Now.”

Once the boy is safely in the Man’s arms, she turns on her branch to face them. “Child,” she says catching both of their attention. “Be careful when you climb. There are few trees left that are capable, and fewer still that would be willing, to save a child of Man,” she warns and then melds back into her tree. She watches the female apologize to the Man (the boy’s father, she realizes) and scold the young boy and drag him off.

But the follower of the Old Ways remains. He rests a hand on her trunk and whispers, “Thank you, Lady.”

She shudders her branches in answer and a single acorn lands at his feet. He stares at it for a moment before bending to pick it up. The significance is not lost on him (it is late Spring and acorns aren’t usually produced until Fall) so he nods his head once in promise. “I will make sure it’s given to him,” he tells her. 

She shivers her branches again then wraps herself deeply in within her tree and sleeps.


	2. Chapter 2

Time marches on. The boy continues to return (he was given her acorn, she can feel that he keeps it with him) but he does not climb to her high branches. She does not leave her tree for him. She is old and, though she holds ancient wisdom and power, she had not taken her humanoid form in many cycles. She finds that to do so is tiring. 

Eventually, it is the begging of the Follower that calls her out of her tree once more. Over a cycle has passed and it is now winter. 

“Lady, please.” 

It is the desperation in the tone that calls to her. That cuts through the disconnect she’s created outside her tree. She brings herself to the very edge, just shy of stepping out entirely. 

The Follower in on his knees at the base of her tree. 

“Siger, what _are_ you doing?” a woman demands as she walks closer. Waddles, really, she is heavy with child. The strands of Fate dance around the boy (for it will be a boy) with vibrant energy she hasn’t seen since the days her kind were commonplace. 

“We’ve tried everything else, Violet,” the Follower answers the woman, who sighs and crosses her arms. 

“It’s the dead of winter, our son has been missing for a day and a half, and you expect a _tree_ to help you find him?” she snaps. 

She is meant to be dormant, this is the season for sleeping, but she cannot leave the boy to the cold. Especially not when help has been asked of her.

Before she leaves her tree, she cautiously calls along her root system. She is old and it spreads wide, tangles and merges with other trees. It doesn’t take much to find the acorn she had given him. 

The woman gasps when she steps from the tree. "That way," she points. "In a cave amongst a copse of elm."

"Thank you, Lady," the Follower answers but the woman is less satisfied.

"How far is he? Is he alright?" 

More questions, irrelevant and pointless. "He is amongst the elm," she tells them because she cannot say that he is just under a meter to the southeast, lost near the far corner of Blackwater Forest. These are Man's words and she does not know them. 

She points again. "That way. Amongst the elm." She slips back in her tree then, she can travel far faster in her roots. 

When she finds him, his skin is a blue tint that Man does not usually manage but he but he yet breathes so she encourages the plants around him from their winter dormancy. 

He barely stirs when she places a vine woven blanket over him. It won't do much, he has little warmth of his own to contain and she is a tree and thus has none of her own to offer him. She settles for rubbing his arms and hands. 

Larger, darker hands join hers, soon lifting the boy (blanket and all) to be cradled to his own chest. He is Stone. He has the warmth of underground magma and sun-baked boulders to offer.

"It is a long time since you walked among us, Oak," he says. It is almost a question but the air in the cave begins to rise without prompting. 

"You must warm him carefully," she answers instead, tucking the blanket around him tightly as violent shivers begin to wrack his body. "Too warm too quickly will shock his system and damage him."

"I will be careful," he assures her. "The boy must certainly be something special. It is even longer since you looked on humans with any sort of kindness."

When the Follower finds them, Stone has retreated back into the stone walls of the cave so he can watch and protect without being seen. He may not look upon humans unkindly but he has no desire for his presence to be known either.

She does not blame him. 

There is no distrust this time when the Follower takes the boy from her, only the gratitude of a father who'd found the living child he thought dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nymphs are supposed to be female. I'm playing a bit fast and loose with mythology here ;)


	3. Chapter 3

Time passes and the next cycles are the happiest she can ever remember being. The other child (Sherlock) is born and the older boy (Mycroft, her acorn child) brings him to play in her shade. They grow. Sherlock learns to walk and speak. To run. To climb. Mycroft never again ventures higher than her lowest branches but Sherlock is fast and reckless. 

He never falls, her branches won’t let him. 

They grow and play. But all too soon, he is no longer a child and stops believing the fanciful tales of his childhood. What is years for him is but the blink of an eye for one as old as she. He has not seen her in some time. 

He leaves (for school, for university) and Sherlock grows quiet. 

Then Sherlock is no longer a child either but he is not the same quiet young adult his brother was. He is angry (at the world, at his brother, at himself) and he takes it out on the people around him. When that stops working, he takes it out on himself (drugs, sex, anything to bring them closer while pushing them away). 

This time, it is Mycroft at her feet (not the Follower, not Siger). He begs for help and for guidance. Not from her specifically, but from any who will listen. He is far away, in London but she is no longer bound to this tree in Sussex. 

He had thrown her acorn away (a childhood trinket, no point in keeping it) but her acorns hold power and it took root. The small sapling is all she needs to make the exhaustive journey to London.

She answers his call.

**Author's Note:**

> One thing that I'm not sure is abundantly clear: The tree isn't actually haunted. She was used as a hanging tree and later when people saw Anthea around the three (before she retreated entirely) they just assumed it was a ghost.
> 
> Also, I'm on tumblr [here](http://janecshannon.tumblr.com). I'm starting to publish bits and pieces of my own work there rather than just reblogging other peoples stuff so I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out :)


End file.
